Jericho Iteration

by Allen Steele

  Great. Just what I needed right now: they’d call the police and report a homicidal maniac hanging around the courthouse plaza. I closed my eyes and knocked my head against the side of the urn. In another minute this place would be surrounded by cops who’d …

  A minute.

  That was it. McLaughlin had told me that it took sixty seconds for the laser to recharge itself. Assuming he hadn’t been lying to me, I had some lead time before the killer could squeeze the trigger again.

  This was of little comfort to me. At least a minute had gone by already, between the instant Beryl had been shot and this moment in time. But if the killer still had me in his direct line of fire, then he should have picked me off by now. Sure, maybe he had seen where I had taken cover—but so long as I had the planter between us, then he couldn’t skrag me as well.

  Not yet, at least. I couldn’t remain here much longer. Sooner or later, I’d have to get to my feet.

  Forget about that, I told myself. Concentrate on what’s going on here …

  Okay, okay. She couldn’t have been shot from a window in either the courthouse or Government Center; those buildings were on either side of me, and anyone standing in the windows would be able to see me. The jail had few windows of which to speak, and it was the most unlikely place for a sniper to be hiding. I ruled out the high-rise apartment complex behind the courthouse; the angle of fire was all wrong.

  This still left at least another four or five buildings on the other side of Central Avenue. If I could only figure out which one was the—

  There was a commotion from the courthouse entrance. I glanced over my shoulder to see a half-dozen people hesitantly emerging from the glass double doors: lawyers, clients, court witnesses, and clerks, all staring at me. A uniformed cop was right behind them; one of the onlookers pointed my way and the cop drew his gun, but instead of taking matters into his own hands he quickly urged the rubberneckers back into the building before he took cover within the entranceway. From what little I could make of him, I could see him pull out his beltphone, snap it open, and hold it close to his face.

  The Clayton cop shop was located only a few blocks away. I now had the option of holding out until the law arrived. It was a tempting thought—surrender peacefully and allow myself to be taken into custody, then prove my innocence in my own sweet time—but that still meant I would have to emerge from hiding. The sniper could take me out while I was surrounded by a SWAT team. Even if they doped out how and why I had suddenly fallen down with a self-cauterized hole in my head, it wouldn’t mean shit so far as I was concerned.

  Fuck it. I had to pinpoint the sniper myself … but now I had an idea.

  Still crouching low behind the planter, I pulled Joker out of my jacket pocket, flipped it open, and switched to verbal mode. “Joker, log on,” I said.

  “Good afternoon, Gerry. What can I do for you?”

  “Gimme a street map of the Clayton district.” I glanced over my shoulder again at the courthouse cop; he was still laying low, waiting for his backup to arrive. “Display a three-block radius surrounding the intersection of South Central and Carondelet.”

  “Working … just a moment, please.” There was silence while my PT modemed into a library neural-net. Two or three moments passed before the uplink was completed and the map was laid out on the PT’s clamshell screen. “Here is the map you requested.”

  I could hear sirens approaching from the distance. I forced the sound from my mind. “Okay. Now … uh, overlay a 3-D graphic of all buildings within this perimeter, and make it snappy.”

  “Snappy is not an available function. Please define.”

  “Forget snappy,” I said impatiently. “Just do it.”

  Computer-animated buildings sprang from the gridwork of streets. Now the map resembled an aerial photo of this part of Clayton, including the courthouse plaza itself. “Very good,” I said. “Logon graphics-edit. I’m giving you a new coordinate for the map. I want you to add it to your memory.”

  “Certainly, Gerry.”

  I touched the miniature trackball and gently moved the cursor across the screen until it was approximately above the spot in the courtyard where Hinckley’s body lay. When I removed my finger, the cursor vanished and a tiny X remained in its place.

  So far, so good, but the sirens were getting closer now. I looked over my shoulder again but couldn’t see the cop who had been hiding in the doorway. I took a deep breath, then went on. “Okay … now display lines between this coordinate and … ah …”

  Shit. All of a sudden, I was stumped by my own ingenuity. How could I ask Joker to show me the probable line-of-sight trajectory between Hinckley and the sniper? I already knew what would happen if I phrased the question the wrong way; lines would radiate in all directions from the coordinate I had registered on the map.

  But how could I explain the problem to a literal-minded computer? Well, see, there’s someone lying on the ground nearby who’s just been shot by laser beam, and I’m the next target, so I want you to try to figure out which building on this grid the sniper was firing from … and, by the way, the cops are closing in, so make it snappy. That means quick, right away, pronto, haul ass …

  Yeah. Fat chance … but it was better than nothing. I would have to dumb-fuck my way through this. “Given that the coordinate I just designated is five-point-five feet tall …” I said slowly.

  “Pardon me, Gerry, but I have received an instant message for you.”

  Joker’s voice was maddeningly calm. Here I was, trying to think through a complex problem to save my life, and it wanted to deliver e-mail to me. I winced and swore under my breath. “This is not a good time, Joker.”

  “I’m sorry, Gerry, but the IM has a priority interrupt. The sender has identified itself as Ruby Fulcrum.”

  What the …?

  “Gimme the message!” I snapped.

  The screen bisected into two parts; the map remained intact on the upper half, although reduced by fifty percent, while the lower half displayed a message bar:

  >Laser beam fired from 1010 South Central Avenue, floor five<

  At the same moment, a red line traced itself from the coordinate I had registered on the map to the condemned five-story office building directly across the corner from the courthouse.

  I stared at the screen. How the hell could …?

  “Freeze, mister!” a voice yelled. “Get your hands in sight!”

  The courthouse cop I had spotted earlier was standing directly behind me. His feet were spread wide apart, his service revolver clasped between both hands and pointed at the back of my head. He had snuck up on me while I was paying attention to Joker.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, trying to calm him down. “I don’t have a gun, see?” I held up Joker in my right hand, keeping my left hand where he could see it. “Look, it’s not a gun, all right?”

  The cop wasn’t impressed. “Yes sir, I can see what it is,” he said evenly. “I want you to put it down on the ground, stand up and put your hands behind your head. Now, sir.”

  I carefully placed Joker on the concrete and wrapped my hands around the back of my head, but I didn’t stand up. “Officer,” I said as calmly as I could, “the woman over there was shot from the top floor of that building.” I nodded toward the condemned building across Central from Government Center. “I had nothing to do with it, but—”

  The officer’s eyes darted once toward the building, then back to me. He wasn’t buying it. “Get on your feet, mister.”

  “Look, I’m telling you, if I stand up now, he’s going to shoot—”

  His attention was fixed solely upon me. “I’m not kidding, buddy!” he demanded. “Get up with your hands behind your head!”

  The sirens were much louder now, probably only a block away, racing down Central Avenue toward the courthouse. The officer was waiting for his backup to arrive, and he wasn’t about to give me any slack. There was a dead woman on the sidewalk, and his suspect was giving him a song-and-dance routine.
His right forefinger was wrapped around the trigger of his gun. This was a young rookie, still in his twenties and fresh out of the academy; he wanted to be a Good Cop, but I was only too aware of the fact that some members of the force had a bad rep for being trigger-happy under pressure.

  As the first police cruiser howled into sight and screeched to a halt in front of the plaza, I took a deep breath. The cavalry had arrived; maybe they had scared off the sniper. “Okay,” I said, “just stay cool. I’m standing up.”

  The second cruiser arrived, stopping behind the first one; two cops had already jumped out of the first car and were rushing over to check on Beryl Hinckley. I slowly began to rise out of my squat, but as I did I kept my eyes fixed on the empty windows of the building Ruby Fulcrum had pinpointed.

  I had barely raised my head and shoulder above the height of the urn when I glimpsed vague movement in a corner window on the fifth floor: a brief, dull reflection, like sunlight reflecting off something metallic …

  “Duck!” I yelled, then threw myself to the ground.

  “Don’t … AWWWHHHH!”

  A small black hole appeared in the cop’s chest, just below his neckline. He dropped his gun as he grabbed at his collarbone, screaming in agony, then his legs collapsed beneath him and he fell backward to hit the pavement. He was still alive, but the laser beam had cut straight though his body.

  Two more cops from the second cruiser, who had been running over to assist him, stopped dead in their tracks. They had seen the whole thing; judging from the expressions on their faces, they couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened. They glanced first at their buddy, then at me, then back at him again.

  “I didn’t do a thing!” I yelled as I lay flat on the ground, my arms spread out before me. “I’m just lying here … get him an ambulance!”

  The cops unfroze. Instead of rushing me, they hurried to the rookie’s side. He was writhing in pain, his legs thrashing against the pavement. His colleagues kneeled beside him; one of them grabbed his beltphone and flipped it open. “Mobile Charlie-Five, answering call at the courthouse!” he snapped. “Code ten-three, officer down!”

  The other two cops ran over to assist them. For the moment, they were entirely concerned with the injured officer. No one was paying attention to me. I rose to my hands and knees, carefully picked Joker up from the concrete and shoved it in my pocket …

  And then I jumped to my feet and took off running.

  Not away from the scene, though, but straight toward the abandoned building.

  18

  (Friday, 1:07 P.M.)

  ONE THING TO BE said for knowing that a sniper is trying to kill you: it makes you run faster.

  Even as I sprinted across the intersection, I knew that I had less than thirty seconds—if even that—to reach cover before the laser’s batteries recharged. On the other hand, if I could make it to the building itself, then the gunner upstairs wouldn’t be able to shoot me. A clean vertical shot would be nearly impossible from up there, or otherwise he would have fired at Beryl before we had jaywalked across the street.

  I heard cops shouting behind me as I made a beeline for the building, demanding that I halt. The thought crossed my mind that one of them might open fire on me, but I wasn’t about to stop and lie down in the middle of the intersection. I was screwed if I did and screwed if I didn’t, and all I could hope for was the notion that a well-trained police officer wouldn’t shoot a running man in the back …

  So I kept running.

  A laser beam didn’t punch a hole through my head, nor did I heard the crack of a gunshot as I reached the opposite side of the intersection and dashed toward the building’s front doors. Although its nineteenth-century facade was largely intact, official condemnation notices were pasted across the plywood nailed over the windows.

  I ducked into the recessed doorway and took a deep breath. I was safe for the moment, but I still had to get inside before the cops followed me. The narrow door, itself covered with plywood, had been secured with a padlock; when I looked closer, though, I saw that the lock’s hasp had been severed as if by a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters, then carefully rehung to make it look still secure.

  The door’s pneumatic hinge wheezed as I tugged it open and stepped into the narrow entranceway, cautiously avoiding the shattered glass that lay on the floor of the foyer. The door closed behind me. Faint sunlight penetrated the gloom through cracks in the plywood, making it possible for me to read the dislodged building register resting on its side against the wall: lawyer’s offices for the most part, although the second and fifth floors had been vacant at the time of the quake.

  The building was stone quiet.

  Groping along the walls with my hands, I made my way farther into the building, passing a battered water fountain, an inactive elevator, and the entrance to what had once been a barber shop, until I reached the end of the hallway and found the door leading to the stairwell.

  The door squeaked as I pulled it open; I hesitated for a moment, listening intently to the darkness above me. I still couldn’t hear anything, but that meant nothing. For all I knew, the sniper could be at the top of the stairwell, waiting for my head to come into sight.

  For a few moments I considered the safest option but almost immediately discarded that idea. Retreat only meant giving the sniper a chance to try again some other time … but now I had a slim chance of cornering the bastard and ending this game once and for all.

  So I entered the stairwell, carefully let the door slide shut, then began to climb the stairs.

  Light shining through unboarded windows at each landing guided me as I made my way upward, peering around each corner before I jogged up the next set of risers. Mice and cockroaches fled from my approach; the building smelled of old dust and the stale urine of evicted squatters. On the third-floor landing, I found a small pile of rubble from a collapsed ceiling. I picked a short length of iron rebar out of the mess and hefted it in my hands—remembering the crazy lawyer I had seen at the Muny a couple of nights earlier, I wondered if his firm’s offices had once been located here—then I continued my way upstairs.

  No one was waiting for me on the fifth-floor landing.

  Stopping for a moment to catch my breath, I studied the door leading toward the end of the building from where the shots had originated. At first glance, it seemed undisturbed, until I noticed a straight line of dust and broken plaster leading away from the hinge at a right angle as if recently pushed aside by the bottom of door.

  There was a window behind me, looking out over the rear of the building. I peered out and spotted a battered brown Toyota mini-van parked in the back alley, near the bottom of a fire escape. From what I could see, it looked as if the fire escape had a gravity ladder leading to the pavement. If that was the killer’s wheels, then he would probably be using the fire escape to make his getaway from the building.

  I should have thought of that earlier. It wouldn’t have been quite as stupid or reckless to wait in the alley until he reached the bottom of the fire escape. No turning back now, though. I was here, and he was somewhere in there, and the time had come to take down the son of a bitch before he killed somebody else.

  Gripping the iron bar in my left hand, I tiptoed to the door, grasped its handle, and slowly eased it open.

  A short hallway led me past the defunct elevator and the door of the vacant office space; at the opposite end of the corridor was the fire-escape window. The window was raised, and the office door was propped open with a short piece of broken wood.

  Through the door, I could hear vague, hurried movement: metal moving against metal, a zipper sliding down, then up again. The grunt of breath being exhaled. I inched my way toward the door, put my back against the wall, and peered through the doorframe.

  The space beyond the doorway was completely vacant; even before the quake, all the interior drywalls had been knocked down, leaving open a large, empty room bordered only by the outer walls. Sullen midday sunlight, flecked with dust
motes, streamed through the windows and the gaping hole in the ceiling where the roof had partially collapsed, leaving broken pipes, brick, and mortar strewn across the dirty tile floor.

  On the opposite side of the room, the killer was packing up the tools of his trade.

  He was nobody I recognized. In fact, he looked like nobody anyone would ever recognize. Average height, medium build, late thirties or early forties, wearing a beige workman’s jumpsuit. A wireless radio headset hung around his neck. Sunlight reflected dully off a receding hairline, which had already left him half bald, and the wire-rimmed glasses on his plain face. People talk about the banality of evil; I was looking right at it. This dude could have been a janitor, an electrician, an exterminator cruising for rats … anything but a professional assassin.

  He moved quickly as he dismantled his weapon: a small compressed-gas tank, a contraption that looked like a compact piston-driven pump, a pair of storage batteries attached by slender cables to a long, cumbersome instrument that vaguely resembled a World War II vintage bazooka, itself mounted on a tripod with an infrared telescopic sight above its barrel. All of it was being stripped down and loaded into a two-wheeled golf caddie.

  You think “laser rifle” and the first thing you imagine is something from a late-show SF movie—small, sleek, no larger than an AK-47—but this thing resembled nothing more or less than an industrial welding rig from Chevy Dick’s garage. Of course two people had been shot from a van, I thought. You’d need a van just to haul all this shit around.

  Never mind that now. His back was turned to me. His target was gone, and he only wanted to get out of here while the getting was good. Man, was he in for a surprise.

  He had disconnected one of the batteries and had bent over the caddie to shove it in place when I moved through the doorway as quietly as I could, carefully stepping around the broken stuff littering the floor, the rebar grasped in both hands. I paused as he stood up and turned toward the laser itself, pulling an electric screwdriver from the back pocket of his jumpsuit. He fitted it into the base of the tripod; there was a thin mechanical whine as his thumb pressed against the button.